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The amautas were carefully educated to the business of understanding and using the quippus, and “this science was so much perfected that those skilled in it attained the art of recording historical events, laws, and decrees, so as to transmit to their descendants the most striking events of the empire; thus the quippus could supply the place of documents.” Each quippu was a book full of information for those who could read it.
In addition to these, they had many historical traditions of much more importance, related in long poems and preserved in the same way; and there were annals and national documents recorded in the quippus. Some of the Spanish writers on Peru, who described what they saw in the country at the time of the Conquest, discussed its history.
He succeeded in getting assistance from many of the older men who had learned of the amautas, and especially of those who were trained to read the quippus. Nothing was omitted which could aid his purpose. In this way Montesinos made a great collection of what may be called the old Peruvian documents, and gained a vast amount of information which no other writer had used or even sought to acquire.
A class of men called amautas was trained to preserve and teach whatever knowledge existed in the country. It was their business to understand the quippus, keep in memory the historical poems, give attention to the science and practice of medicine, and train their pupils in knowledge.
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